Upper Pylon Two Proudly Presents: The First Annual Upees Awards

Roll out the red carpet, polish your boots, and dust off your dress uniform. This week the crew of Upper Pylon Two presents the first annual Upees!!

This show has more glitz and glamour than Quark counting his gold pressed latnium while wearing the Nagus’s cloak.

Join us as we celebrate the best (and worst) of Season One. We have several categories that we think you will enjoy.

Who wins the biggest Asshole Bajoran Upee? Who wins for best nickname? Which dirtiest UP2 moment will the Upee go to? And the Biggest PAJ Moment goes to?? All these award presentations accumulate towards the biggest moment of the night…Season One’s MVP.

All hands are on deck tonight as we hand out the awards. And don’t forget Melissa’s cookie winners will be announced.

Agree?? Disagree? Want to win your own Upee? Let us know what you think.

Enjoy the show, we hope you have as much fun listening to it as we did making it.

Community Answers

300

10-22-15

Medic1849 says:

For those that want to follow along, or look ahead. Listed below are the nominees for each categories.

No worries, there are NO SPOILERS!!!

Biggest Bajoran Asshole:

-Zayra (the guy with the face) – A Man Alone
-Jumja Stick Guy – In the Hands of the Prophets
-Hovarth and everyone in that village – The Storyteller
-Vedek Winn

Best Nickname:

-Asshole Bajoran
-Ditzy Dax
-PAJ
-Pink Lurch

Biggest PAJ Moment:

-PAJ not knowing the meaning of “no” and going after Dax and the subsequent spaz punch – Dax
-PAJ flirting on the Bajoran girl using his second best test scores – Q Less
-PAJ flirting with DAX in the holosuite using gems like “cold hands, warm heart” and “what is that exotic scent you are wearing” – A Man Alone
-PAJ flirting with his patient Vash – Q Less

That was great fun, and thank you for including me as the listener representative in the voting!

Which I didn’t know at the time of voting, but not to worry…

So apologies if I didn’t pick anything the rest of the listeners agree with!

Yes, I did pick Lwaxana Troi in the best repeating guest. As you suggested, it was difficult to pick repeating guests that we know will come later, but when voting I tried to restrict it to their season one appearance. For that reason, I thought Lwaxana was phenomenal with Odo, and just beat out Garak. I would agree that Garak and Dukat will doubtless take this award in later seasons, but just for season one Majel Barrett Roddenberry’s performance in that turbolift took the prize.

I had a quick check of what I gave in the scoring across the season. Season one got an average of 3.105, and comparing that with my Battle Bridge scoring it’s better than TNG’s season one but not as good as TNG’s season two surprisingly. That may have something to do with the four 5 out of 5 episodes here versus the five 5 out of 5 episodes that TNG season two had.

But it should be noted that season one was far better than I had remembered – for the most part – and as such that alone has made the rewatch I’m doing with you guys worthwhile.

I’m really looking forward to joining you for season two, after a wee bout of shore leave for myself – so expect my feedback to disappear for a couple of weeks!

And finally… can I donate my cookies to everyone on the podcast? You all do such a great job of putting this together that I think you deserve a treat. Plus it makes life a lot easier for Melissa and myself if we don’t have customs headaches!

So much fun I listened to it twice. Some of those categories are going to be even more closely fought in coming seasons, like Best Repeating Guest (as DS9 has so many), Best Cardassian, Best Repeating Aliens and of course, Biggest Bajoran Asshole.

I would have gone for Odo for MVP for season 1, I think, though he just beats out Kira by a hair’s breadth. And I think going purely on the first season I’d have gone for Dukat for Best Repeating Guest, rather than Garak, even though Garak became my one of my favourite characters on the show in later seasons.

Sorry for not being more active throughout the season, but I’ve been kept busy, so I usually end up having to catch back up to the podcast again and again. Well, let’s be fair, some of it may have to do with procrastination as well. That’s my bad.
Anyway, I really wanted to give you a comment on this podcast that closes off Season 1 because I think you’ve done an amazing job with it. One wouldn’t even believe that this was a brand new podcast with a brand new crew composition, you guys are all so funny and insightful, not to speak about your chemistry which is brilliant!

Since I haven’t been up-to-date enough on the podcast to comment on each individual one, I thought I might as well take the opportunity here. Now, keep in mind it’s a lot of episodes and I haven’t been keeping notes, this is straight off the top of my mind. 😛

Admiral, I’m really glad to have you back on! Big fan of yours, even when you’re wrong. I agree with you a lot though and that trend has continued this season, but make no mistake, my allegiance is with STAFF.
Speaking of you and remaining STAFF-members. You and Smonskey started getting along really well when you became roommates. Now you’re agreeing with each other a lot of the time. I mean, it’s great, but am I the only one that feels something is “off”? Like some great imbalance in the universe? I think one of Guinan’s lines fits perfectly here: “It’s all wrong, Captain. This is not the way it’s supposed to be.”

Ben, it was awesome having you back as well. Now, I don’t necessarily agree with your points all that often, but you’re still fascinating to me. It’s difficult to explain, but your recent guest appearance on the show is a good example actually. As I was listening to your opinion about the episode, I was completely enthralled by everything you were saying. It was like poetry or art in general; perfect in every way. Then, when you were done, I snapped out of the trance you’d put me into. I started thinking about it and found myself thinking “What? I’m not sure…huh? What does that even mean? What was he trying to say? That doesn’t even seem to make sense…”. This happens from time to time when I listen to Ben’s reasoning and I genuinely don’t know if I’m the one failing miserably here or if this is a natural reaction. 😛
With that said, I love listening to you, Ben. How could I not, you seem to be the kryptonite to my usually rational, systematic mind that doesn’t usually struggle analyzing whatever comes its way. How could that not be intriguing? 😉

Tak. I don’t remember which episode you were on for, where you were having a mental breakdown, but it was hilarious to listen to. 😀 I found myself thinking three things:
1. Wow, Tak can be a really bitter guy.
2. But he actually has a good point here and there, even when he’s oh so bitter about things.
3. I want more Tak! Seriously, Tak is gold. All that bitterness, all that nitpicking. It’s called passion and I appreciate it. Besides, I like sour sweets.

Cpt. Melissa, great season as always. Never mind those anti-philosophy heathens.

Since I haven’t been up-to-date on each individual episode enough to comment in time, I thought I may as well throw in some comments from the top of my mind here. And because I don’t want to make my main post into a book, I’ve divided it into two parts. 😛

The entire punish vs forgive discussion was very interesting and I do believe I got your point, Melissa. I am a strong believer in the fact that two wrongs does not make one right, so I don’t think the justice system should be used for revenge. However, I don’t agree when you say that there’s no point in “punishing” criminals by giving them a sentence based on the law. This system, I would say, is not supposed to be a system of revenge, it’s supposed to be a system that establishes order and protects the citizens and their rights from each other. What is allowed in our societies and what isn’t, as well as the consequences of breaking those laws. They should be as clear, predictable and as transparent as possible (which is a major issue with the secret laws and courts that have been put into effect the last decade, as well as allowing a government to do “anything it sees fit”, but that’s another topic). It’s only natural that when somebody does break the law, the society enforces the law and the consequences from that action. I would even say that I’m not in favor of whatever it’s called when time runs out for trying somebody for a crime. Like in the scenarios where somebody does something that is supposedly considered a serious crime, leaves the jurisdiction until the prosecution time runs out and then returns and everybody is just supposed to pretend like nothing happened. This seems just absurd to me. It’s not even about revenge for me, it’s about order and everybody’s equal value in front of the law. Why would others have to take the consequences, if we seem perfectly okay with letting this guy off the hook? Are we then sending a message that it’s okay to do this now, as long as you get out of the jurisdiction in question? I think they’re all pretty relevant things to consider when thinking of the practical workings of a relatively safe and orderly society. Everybody will not agree on ethics and morals, some won’t care either way, that’s why this is needed to protect us from each other.
I do want to point out one thing though, as far as consequences in the form of incarcerations. This is also a tool to be used when the person in question hasn’t just committed a crime worthy of it, but continues to be a threat to the rest of the population. Some people are there because they need physiological help, some can be rehabilitated. It’s a balance act to decide when somebody is in a position to have their sentence lightened or be given parts of their freedom back ahead of time. This is generally a positive thing, I feel, but if it means criminals that are not in any way rehabilitated are released ahead of time, you might end up with a situation where the consequences are nothing more than an annoyance for people involved in gangs and serious crime.
To some degree, this is what happens often in Sweden, where a lot of focus is put on rehabilitation and getting people back out of jail. However, often it means that people involved in serious crime are out within a couple of years at most, even for pretty serious crimes. Over and over. Frankly, I think it’s understandable when people feel unsafe and that the hardened criminals barely have to deal with any consequences for what they did. It can be a tough balancing act indeed, but it is essential for people’s trust in the system and sense of safety. Otherwise, you may end up in a situation where people to some extent see no reason to even acknowledge the system and just assume that it’s now an anarchy where everybody has to be quiet and fend for themselves however they can. Leaving the door wide open for gangs and organized crime.

On another note; You know, I was bit saddened on the whole religion vs science/education episode, because Melissa felt that she had to defend herself. That saddened me a little. :'( As the guys said during the podcast, it really wasn’t supposed to be a Melissa vs All episode and I doubt that anybody was aiming any of their points at you, Melissa. I think it’s okay to debate and even disagree without having it be a personal thing.
Take the paragraph above as an example. There’s a reason why every time I show up, I have something to disagree on. Because if I agree, then that’s not much of a discussion or debate, is it? Therefore, disagreeing is a lot more constructive and fun in certain scenarios. 🙂
With that out of the way, I pretty much agree with Matt and Matt on the topic though. Not that I would ever try to enforce it on others, everybody is free to believe whatever they want as long as it doesn’t encroach on my own freedom to do so, that’s what I think. I would say I’m an agnostic, by which I mean that my attitude towards it all is somewhere along the lines of; I don’t know. So, I’m just going to live based on what I have to base my decisions on, be that my own moral code, experience, current scientific knowledge. For that reason, it pretty much ends up resembling atheism in practice. I figure that, that way I can be proud and stand for my decisions most of the time (mistakes can never be avoided) no matter what the truth is.
The idea that non-religous people can’t have morals, is of course very wrong, just like the idea that all religious people do have morals. I would say that I’m more morally minded than most people I’ve ever met. It is my own morals though, which on the one means that nobody enforces them and the only reason I follow them is because I’m convinced it’s the right thing to do, and on the other hand I’m giving no guarantees that my morals are synchronized or even compatible with everybody else’s morals.

As you yourselves said though, we generalize a lot in order to discuss the topic on a more all-encompassing level, but there’s a lot of internal differences on either side and there’s all kind of people out there.
I’ve met religious people who are sweet and genuinely seem like good people. What they believe or don’t believe about “God” is irrelevant at that point, if religion was the encouragement they needed to be good people, then I’m happy for them. On the other side of the coin, I’ve met plenty of supposedly religious people who kind of twist and turn, or even outright ignore, the religious teachings when they don’t like them. People who you can clearly see don’t believe and don’t really follow those teachings, even though they want to be part of the group. Or religious people that have been very righteous and by the book, until one day they gave up their faith. At which point it became absolutely clear that this person never really believed in these values, it was just a decision based on self-preservation because of the judgment that they thought could come after this life. The moment they stopped believing in it, they became absolutely horrible people with no moral values at all.
The same thing kind of applies to non-religious people really. There’s plenty of very balanced people who admit that they don’t really have any proof. In fact, that’s why I don’t like to say that I’m an athesist per say, because how could I possibly know without any doubt that there’s no god. That doesn’t follow from any acceptable scientific or rational methodology (Smonskey?! 😛 ). It’s almost by definition impossible to fully determine that god does not exist.
On the other hand, you have athesists who are very militant and completely unable and/or unwilling to accept that there are other beliefs and that there aren’t any definitive proofs. Those who have such “faith” in science or the non-existance of any sort of god or superior force, sometimes have almost like a religious faith. Which is ironic. 😀

I do want to comment one last thing on this topic, which is the constant references to science, that some religious people and even some science-based people misunderstand every now and then. Especially the last part annoys me a bit, because it’s a complete misrepresentation. “Science” is not an entity, or a static and compact reference to some eternal truth (because we don’t understand everything). “Science” isn’t even necessarily the body of knowledge that has been accomplished, in one way or another, through Science. What “Science” usually refers to, when it comes to this topic, is the methodology behind how the knowledge was acquired, the peer-review process by other people and organizations within the field (which quite frankly isn’t always great), the detailed and reproducible proofs and how future work can be based on previous to reach further and further into what we don’t already understand. The body of knowledge is forever changing, progressing. Knowledge that is accepted as true at one time, may be slightly corrected in the future, when future research based on that work made us understand a detail that we’d missed to consider before, improving our understanding. However, because of the detailed, transparent and reproducible previous work, it means that they were on to something even if it wasn’t spot on, and only because of that work were we later able to understand that there were more factors we hadn’t considered.
The current body of knowledge is accepted as fact in lack of any absolute truths laying around, but it can always change as our research reaches further and our understanding grows. For this reason, the body of knowledge at any specific time isn’t necessarily what science is referencing in this kind of topic, it’s the scientific methodologies and mindset that have enabled us to acquire that knowledge and verify it that is being referenced.
I hope that was of any value to anyone. It bugs me when things are misrepresented. I hope I didn’t get it wrong, feel free to jump in if I did, Professor. 😛

Oh, Melissa. Your thoughts of implementing some sort of customized Melissa-scale for yourself made me laugh for a while. 😛 Seriously though, if it makes you happy to give fives to most episodes, then I’m happy as well.
The thing is, seeing as we all are fans of Star Trek – meaning we like it – I would assume that’s what everybody else is already doing a lot of the time. Basically being a bit tougher on the episodes in some way, in order to actually differentiate the good episodes from each other, so not all are just fives. You mentioned going over to a 10p-scale, but if you divide everything by two you get the same result in the current 5p-scale. Do you see what I mean? 😛
The guys have their own little scales in order to differentiate. I guess you already considered them. Otherwise, you could use a scale that basically gravitates towards the middle. So average episode have tendency to all clump up towards the middle, and the further out towards the bad and good side of the scale you go, the better an episode has to be. It’s basically a variation on your idea to only grade from 4 to 5 from now on, on a more global scale. That way, it’s easier to get from 2,5 -> 3 or 2,5 -> 2 then it is to go from 4 -> 4,5 or 1 -> 0,5. That way you aren’t differentiating average episodes so much (oh well, they’re average), but you are differentiating the grading among really good episodes and really bad episodes. Just an idea. 🙂

Finally, here we are. This is the end. Our misery is over. The barbed manacled have been unlocked. The vat of uncomfortably hot oil has been drained. The tomb of inward pointing spikes has opened. The Ceti eels have been removed from our ears. Eh, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

So before doing this review, if you’d asked me which episodes of Season 1 to watch, I’d tell you to start with season 3 and don’t get back to me until Dukat throws Sisko a fast ball. But if you insisted on an extensive watch/skip listing, I’d tell you watch The Emissary only because it is the pilot and we should all give our pilots their due respect if we want to return to Earth in one piece. And of course Duet, because it is only good one.

Now having watched season 1 chronologically for the first time, I can put 8 episodes on the watch list:

Emissary: Not just because it’s the pilot, and we should all generously tip our pilots so they remember how gravity works, it’s a strong start with only a few oddities that that can be forgiven because it’s okay if a pilots make small mistakes, like clipping an air traffic tower after takeoff.

Captive Pursuit: While I’m not the biggest Save the Tosk proponent (I mean, “I’ll say that’s a shame” but I’m not attending his funeral. Do you have any idea how many redshirts die on my watch alone?) I can’t deny that it’s a compelling story with a clever ending.

Q-Less: Even when he’s at his worst, Q is entertaining. There’s just no getting around it. I teeter on the edge with this one as it makes me sad that it’s not better. Like it or not there’s just enough in here to warrant a peek. Which reminds, I have some quarters to barge into when this is over.

The Nagus: The first big Ferengi episode gets high marks for a perfect Grand Nagus and an enjoyable reintroduction to the Ferengi. A must-see on any Ferengi-episode-binge.

Vortex: Whine about Kroden all you like, I’ll still defend his morally questionable butt. Heck, I’d compare him to Marritza. Albeit he’s a less tragic character with a less talented actor in a less tightly written episode with the complete opposite ending. Okay, there are a lot of borderline episodes here, this is the borderline that I quite enjoyed.

Battle Lines: Do I like this episode? Yeah mostly. It’s a high concept story with mostly good visuals and clumsy storytelling. Just enough soul-evaporating bleakness to push it into my good graces.

The Forsaken: Luxwana in a fun and funny episode. Another example of how DS9 takes established cannon and makes it even better.

Duet: Enough said.

In the Hands of the Prophets: A great ending that pairs very well with the pilot. A good landing to it’s takeoff. A copilot if you will, whom you should also tip, because one of them has to be sober.

And there is that episode that I could only recommend to certain people.

Move Along Home: I really thought I’d hate this episode, but I loved every terrible moment of it. It’s so terrible that’s it’s barely recognizable as DS9. I love seeing it as a parallel to tabletop RPGs. I mean the mullet guy alone looks and acts like a “super hardcore” gamer. He probably brags about his customized dice, laughs when people don’t know Elven curse-words and throws a big hissy fit over if your mention homebrew rules.

Actually I did my own calculations and the average episode got a 2.8 which is not bad for season that had a .25 (not 2.5) in its run. Do I like the season as whole? No. It’s still the worst season of DS9. But it’s better than I expected. So I enjoyed my time watching and reviewing it and look forward to season 2. Thank you so much to the podcasters of Upper Pylon 2. This was an awesome first chapter.

Finally I wanted to leave on a song whose general feelings can be applied to DS9 season 1.

I’ve probably been waiting on this suggestion for too long, but I think we should allow Melissa and Chris give episodes 6 stars and even 7 stars if they really really want to. And when we go the scoreboard, Matt will routinely subtract two stars from all scores and boom! We’ve got an equitable 5 star system again.

The main thing I would hope that everyone can take away from this awards voting episode is – Plurality Voting sucks!
Notice how a few times throughout the podcast it was mentioned that a voter couldn’t vote for the choice they really wanted because they needed to worry about influencing the bigger race between the presumed front-runners – “the Democrat and the Republican”.
In the science of election systems—which I happen to know a lot about—this is called the spoiler effect or the effect of irrelevant candidates. In plurality voting (where each voter has to chose one and only one candidate) it is very possible for an irrelevant candidate [one who has no real chance of winning] to pull votes away from other actual contenders and therefore change the outcome of the election. And this means that unfortunately voters have to use their votes strategically and often can’t vote for the candidate they really prefer for fear of letting the candidate they least prefer to win.
But the good news is that there are better ways to vote. I suggest that we all work towards using better voting systems. Sure, that may be difficult to accomplish in a larger context like actual national elections. But the good news is that you as podcasts hosts can easily change your own voting system quite easily.
If you are interested, you could spend a little time researching different voting methods. A good place to start would be videos at http://www.electology.org/#!videos/c19dw
But, if you just want a little short-cut, and you are willing to take my advice, I do have a suggestion. Change your voting system (from Plurality Voting) to Approval Voting. It only takes one little change. When you have the voters vote, simply allow them to vote for more than “one and only one” candidate. Allow them to vote for more—possibly even as many as one less than the number of candidates. That way, voters can feel free to vote for the candidate they really like (even if it is likely an “irrelevant candidate”) and also be able to vote for one of the likely front-runners and not have to worry about throwing their vote away on a candidate likely to lose. And it remains very easy to tally up the winner of the race—simply sum up all votes cast for each candidate and the candidate with the most votes wins. (And you can even have run-off elections if necessary between top candidates if there are close results or ties.)
Approval Voting is a very easy way to help you restore true democracy in your life, whether that be in a silly awards podcast or an actual political election. It eliminates the issues with vote splitting and allows voters to truly express their opinions about different candidates.